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Privacy Choices
Personal Financial Information

What Can You Stop--and What Can’t You Stop?
Your Right to Opt Out
Privacy Notices You May Receive
What to Do When You Receive Your Notices
Where Else to Turn for Help
Appendix: Laws Affecting Your Personal Financial Privacy

You’ve probably been receiving privacy notices from banks and other
financial companies. These notices explain:

What personal financial information the company collects

Whether the company intends to share your personal financial information
with other companies

What you can do, if the company intends to share your personal financial
information, to limit some of that sharing

How the company protects your personal financial information.

Companies that May Send Privacy Notices
Companies involved in financial activities must send their customers
privacy notices, including:
• Banks, savings and loans, and credit unions
• Insurance companies
• Securities and commodities brokerage firms
• Retailers that directly issue their own credit cards (such as
department stores or gas stations)
• Mortgage brokers
• Automobile dealerships that extend or arrange financing or leasing
• Check cashers and payday lenders
• Financial advisors and credit counseling services
• Sellers of money orders or travelers checks.
Financial companies share information for many reasons: to offer you
more services, to introduce new products, and to profit from the information
they have about you. If you like to know about other products and services,
you may want your financial company to share your personal financial
information; in this case, you don’t need to respond to the privacy
notice. If you prefer to limit the promotions you receive or do not
want marketers and others to have your personal financial information,
you must take some important steps.

First, it is important to read these privacy notices. They explain how
the company handles and shares your personal financial information. Keep
in mind that not all privacy notices are the same. This guide tells you
about the other steps you can take to help protect the privacy of your
personal financial information.

What Can You Stop--and What Can’t You Stop?
Federal privacy laws give you the right to stop (opt out of) some sharing
of your personal financial information. These laws balance your right
to privacy with financial companies’ need to provide information
for normal business purposes. (For more information on these laws, see
the appendix.) You have the right to opt out of some information sharing
with companies that are:
Part of the same corporate group as your financial company (or affiliates)
Not part of the same corporate group as your financial company (or non-affiliates).
But you cannot opt out and completely stop the flow of all your personal
financial information. The law permits your financial companies to share
certain information about you without giving you the right to opt out.
Among other things, your financial company can provide to non-affiliates:
Information about you to firms that help promote and market the company’s
own products or products offered under a joint agreement between two financial
companies
Records of your transactions--such as your loan payments, credit card
or debit card purchases, and checking and savings account statements--to
firms that provide data processing and mailing services for your company
Information about you in response to a court order
Your payment history on loans and credit cards to credit bureaus.

What Opting Out Means
If you opt out, you limit the extent to which the company can provide
your personal financial information to non-affiliates.
If you do not opt out within a "reasonable period of time"--generally
about 30 days after the company mails the notice-- then the company is
free to share certain personal financial information.
If you didn’t opt out the first time you received a privacy notice
from a financial company, it’s not too late. You can always change
your mind and opt out of certain information sharing. Contact your financial
company and ask for instructions on how to opt out.
Remember, however, that any personal financial information that was shared
before you opted out cannot be retrieved.

Your Right to Opt Out
A privacy notice contains information about the company’s data collection
and information sharing policies. If a financial company does not plan
to share your information except as permitted by law, the notice will
tell you this; in this case, you don’t have a right to opt out.

Non-affiliates. If you have the right to opt out (that is, if the company
plans to share your information), the privacy notice will include instructions
on how to opt out of sharing some information. Unless you opt out, your
financial company can provide your personal financial information (for
example, information on the kinds of stores you shop at, how much you
borrow, your account balances, or the dollar value of your assets) to
non-affiliates for marketing and other purposes.

Affiliates. The privacy notice may also give you the right to opt out
of certain information sharing with affiliates. For example, if a company
intends to provide an affiliate with personal information from your credit
report or loan application, you will usually first be given a chance to
opt out. Companies, however, can share information about you with affiliates
when the information is based solely on your transactions with that company
(transaction information includes whether you pay your bills on time,
the type of accounts you have with the company, and so forth). Read your
notices carefully to see if this type of opt out applies.

Credit bureaus may also sell information about you to lenders and insurers
who use the information to decide whether to send you unsolicited offers
of credit or insurance. This is known as prescreening. You can opt out
of receiving these prescreened offers by calling 1-888-567-8688.

If you want to opt out of information sharing, you must follow the directions
provided by your financial company. For example, you may have to call
a toll-free number or fill out a form and return the form to the company.

In some cases, your financial company may give you the choice to opt
out of different types of sharing. For example, you could opt out of certain
categories of information the company provides to other companies but
allow the company to share other kinds of information.

Privacy Notices You May Receive
Initial Privacy Notice. You will usually receive a privacy notice when
you open an account or become a customer of a financial company. If you
open an account over the phone, however, and you agree, the company may
send you a notice at a later time.

Annual Privacy Notices. Each financial company you have an ongoing relationship
with--for example, the bank where you have a checking account, your credit
card company, or a company that services your loan--must give you a notice
of its privacy policy annually.

Notice of Changes in Privacy Policies. If a company changes its privacy
policy, it will either send you a revised privacy notice or tell you about
the changes in the company’s next annual notice.

A privacy notice may be included as an insert with your monthly statement
or bill, or it may be sent to you in a separate mailing. If you agree
to electronic delivery from an on-line financial company, the notice may
be sent to you by e-mail or it may be made available to you on the company’s
web site.

If you have more than one account with the same company, the company
may send you only one privacy notice for all of your accounts or it may
send you separate notices for each of your accounts.

If you have a joint account with another person (for example, a joint
checking account or a mortgage loan), the financial company may send a
notice to one of you or to each person listed on the account. If the company
provides an opportunity to opt out, it must let one of the account holders
opt out for all joint account holders.

What to Do When You Receive Your Notices
Read all privacy notices.
Get answers to your questions from your financial company.
If applicable, decide whether you want to opt out.
If you want to opt out, follow the instructions in the notice--and, if
necessary, shop around for a financial institution with the privacy policy
you want.

Where Else to Turn for Help
If you have questions or concerns about a company’s privacy policy,
first contact that company directly. If you still have questions about
your privacy rights in dealing with a financial company, you can contact
the federal or state agency that oversees that type of company:

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Regulates state-chartered banks that are members of the Federal Reserve
System, bank holding companies, and branches of foreign banks
Division of Consumer and Community Affairs, Stop 801
20th and C Streets, NW
Washington, DC 20551
202-452-3693
www.federalreserve.gov

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
Regulates national banks, District of Columbia banks, federal branches
and federal agencies of foreign banks, and subsidiaries of such entities.
These typically include banks with "national" or "N.A."
in their names.
Customer Assistance Group
1301 McKinney Street
Suite 3710
Houston, TX 77010
800-613-6743 toll-free
www.occ.treas.gov

Office of Investor Education and Assistance
450 5th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20549-0213
202-942-9634 fax
www.sec.gov/complaint.shtml
Appendix
More Information About the Laws
Affecting Your Personal Financial Privacy
Two federal laws cover different aspects of how companies can share your
financial information, as described in this guide: the Fair Credit Reporting
Act and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act protects the privacy of certain information
distributed by consumer reporting agencies (CRAs). Most CRAs are credit
bureaus that gather and provide information about you, such as if you
pay your bills on time or have filed for bankruptcy, to creditors and
other businesses. Under the law, credit bureaus and other CRAs can release
your information only to those third parties that have certified that
they have a purpose permitted by the law to obtain your consumer report,
such as to evaluate your application for credit, insurance, or employment,
or to rent you an apartment.

When a financial company obtains your credit report from a credit bureau,
it may want to share that information with an affiliate, meaning a company
that owns your financial company, that your financial company owns, or
that is part of the same parent organization or corporate family. Under
the Fair Credit Reporting Act, however, if the financial company plans
to share certain information--for example, from your credit report or
your credit application--with its affiliates, it will usually first notify
you and give you an opportunity to opt out. This notice is likely to be
included in the privacy notice you receive from the financial company
under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act requires financial companies to tell you about
their policies regarding the privacy of your personal financial information.
With some exceptions, the law limits the ability of financial companies
to share your personal financial information with certain non-affiliates.
A non-affiliate is a company that is unrelated to your financial company,
and may include:

Service providers--companies hired by your financial company to perform
a specific service, such as printing your checks
Joint marketers--companies that have an agreement with your financial
company to offer you other financial products or services
Other third-party non-affiliate--which could include companies that may
want access to your financial company’s mailing list to tell you
about other products and services.
Under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, your financial company can provide your
personal financial information to non-affiliated service providers including
joint marketers. But before it shares your information with other third-party
non-affiliates (outside of these exceptions), your financial company must
tell you about its information sharing practices and give you the opportunity
to opt out.